Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Yuki Tanada at the 36th Toronto International Film Festival (L), The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky theatrical poster (R)

by Chris MaGee

“Wow! Three great filmmakers!” Yuki Tanada exclaims when I mention her name
alongside those of Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi. There are
only a handful of filmmakers like Tanada in Japan today, those whose work so
keenly and unsentimentally examines the inner lives of everyday Japanese. It
seems appropriate then to cite this Holy Trinity of Japanese cinema who so
consistently captured the quiet triumphs, bitter heartbreaks and grinding
struggles of their nation; but what I’m after, here in Tanada’s room at
Toronto’s Hyatt Regency Hotel during the 36th Toronto International
Film Festival, are the names of some non-Japanese filmmakers who have inspired her
work. “The two brothers who make the crazy comedies... The Farrelly Brothers!”
she laughs, “I love them!” A surprising answer, but the 37-year-old writer and
director has spent the past eight years surprising and challenging movie
audiences with her frank depictions of 21st-century Japan. Now,
after a 4-year break from the director’s chair, Tanada has returned with her
most accomplished work to date, The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky.

Based on the award-winning 2010 novel by Misumi Kubo, The Cowards
Who Looked to the Sky begins as a love story, albeit a dysfunctional one. Lonely
housewife Anzu (portrayed by former child actress Tomoko Tabata) and high
school student Takumi (Kento Nagayama) are caught up in a tempestuous affair,
one fueled by Anzu’s obsession with a popular romantic manga. Their cosplay love-making
sessions, in which Anzu adopts the persona of a Princess and Takumi her manga
Prince Charming, lie in stark contrast to their daily lives. Despite costly
medical treatments and excessive pressure from her husband and mother-in-law
Anzu is unable to conceive, leaving her self-esteem in tatters. Conversely
Takumi is constantly exposed to the often messy details of childbearing and
birth by his mother, Sumiko (Mieko Harada), who runs a holistic midwives’
clinic out of their home.

Tomoko Tabata and Kento Nagayama as Anzu and Takumi

“Takumi and Anzu were the most difficult part,” Tanada
admits when discussing bringing Kubo’s novel to the screen, “I really had a concern about how I could deliver
their message to the audience, but in that sequence what I wanted to do is show
that these two characters are looking at the same things, but are also two
people living in different environments.” Still, Anzu and Takumi aren’t the
only “cowards” in Tanada’s film. Soon what started out as a love story moves
into much more complex territory. After a decisive crisis between the two
lovers the narrative branches out to explore the lives of Takumi’s mother and her
pregnant patients as well as Takumi’s good friend, convenience store clerk
Fukuda (Masakata Kubota), who struggles not only with a senile grandmother, but
also with his own mother whose oppressive debt has left Fukuda’s home bankrupt.
Still, it was one the novels most conflicted and ultimately least likable
characters in the original novel who drew Tanada to the project.

“Taoka has very strange sexual preferences,” Tanada acknowledges of
Fukuda’s co-worker at the convenience store, a young man who both helps Fukuda
to study for his University entrance exams while secretly molesting
neighborhood children, “At first my thoughts never went beyond what kind of
pain he caused, but after reading the novel I realized that these people who
have this very negative sexual behaviour have real difficulties trying to blend
into society. They are trying to find a way to get along with society. It was
realizing that I had never thought about those issues that really made me
become attached to this character.” It was just a happy accident that saw both
Tanada and producers at Toei Studios considering an adaptation of Kubo’s novel.
“It was perfect timing,” Tanada says of her chance to tackle characters like
Taoka on the big screen.

Sexuality and odd sexual practices have been a recurring theme in the films
of Yuki Tanada. Her confessed love for the low-brow antics of the Farrelly
Brothers makes sense in light of Tanada’s debut feature film, 2004’s Moon and
Cherry. Ostensibly a sex comedy, the film centers on the relationship between a
virginal male university student who is deflowered by his classmate, an
aspiring author who uses the details of their sexual exploits as fodder for her
fiction. 2008’s Ain’t No Tomorrows would further explore the sexual misadventures
of a group of high school students (including a girl on a sexual fact-finding mission and another who has a fetish for sumo wrestlers); but Tanada isn’t convinced that sexuality
has been a connecting thread in her work. “Actually I never thought that was a
theme to my films. I'm just taking it as a very normal thing. As people living
together, sex is just a part of their lives.”

Mieko Harada as Sumiko

This refreshing matter-of-factness may also be the reason why her work has
featured some of the most fully realized female characters in Japanese film
since, well, the work of the abovementioned and universally praised Naruse and
Mizoguchi. Before working with Tomoko Tabata on The Cowards Who Looked to the
Sky, Tanada regularly teamed with some of Japan’s most talented actresses, such
as Noriko Eguchi (Moon and Cherry), Yu Aoi (One Million Yen Girl) and Sakura
Ando (Ain’t No Tomorrows), to breathe life into her female protagonists. Even
when Tanada wasn’t the one calling the shots behind the camera her depictions
of women ring true. Her 2006 screenplay adaptation of Moyoco Anno’s popular
manga Sakuran, brought to the screen by photographer-cum-director Mika
Ninagawa, perfectly captures its sensual, headstrong heroine, the courtesan
Kiyoha (portrayed by Anna Tsuchiya). So, why has she had such great success
with her female characters? “Because I don't have fantasies about women,” she
bluntly, but politely, states.

The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky will be receiving a theatrical release in
Japan this November, just in advance of Japan’s film awards season next spring.
By then, though, we may not only see Yuki Tanada gaining praise for her
directing, but also for her skills as an author. Her absence from filmmaking since
2008’s Ain’t No Tomorrows was largely due to the fact that Tanada has been hard
at work writing her debut novel. “If I had to describe the novel in one word I
would have to say ‘revenge’,” she says of this new literary venture, “It’s very
dark.” Despite its darkness the book will also delve into some happy memories
from Tanada’s youth. “It also includes a lot about a Japanese matsuri
[festival] that I experienced and that touched me when I was little, so the
festival is part of the story.” There are no plans, at least at the moment, for
Tanada to adapt her own novel to the screen. Her main focus now is simply
meeting her publisher’s deadline. “The first deadline was two years ago!” she
chuckles, “but it is almost completed, so next year it should be out.”

Monday, May 14, 2012

Those initially scanning the
program for the 12th Nippon Connection film festival, hosted in Frankfurt, Germany from May 2nd to the 6th, probably would have noticed the especially impressive
selection of new works from some of Japanese cinema’s biggest names. This year,
established auteurs were a more frequent sight alongside lesser-known and
still-emerging directors, whose efforts – from my personal festival experience,
at least – for the most part offered healthy competition against their
better-known colleagues. In fact, I ended up being quite pleasantly surprised
by how many positive viewing experiences I managed to discover in both the
Nippon Cinema and Nippon Visions programs, the latter focusing on independent
and digitally shot productions.

Postcard

The
festival’s opening night film was “Postcard,” the 49th and intended
final film by Kaneto Shindo, who celebrated his 100th birthday on
April 22nd. As Eric Evans ably illustrates in his
full review, this is a markedly odd film that erratically dips and spikes
in its emotional atmosphere. Shinobu Otake stars as Tomoko, a woman who experiences a
spectacular avalanche of misfortune brought about by World War II. Bound to her
in-laws’ isolated farm, she encounters Keita (Etsushi Toyokawa), a veteran who
arrives to fulfill his promise to deliver a cherished article – the titular
postcard – previously owned by her deceased husband, Jouzukuri (Naomasa
Musaka). Otake’s performance is especially remarkable as she channels quiet
resolve, solemn despair and raw, unbridled agony, yet she is but one element in
a piece that seems intent on packing in a full spectrum of moods and spectacles
rather than constructing a more even narrative arc. Thus, we get nearly
implausible depths of hardship, the absurdities of wartime fervor, the
refreshingly lighthearted exchanges between Keita and his uncle, a comically
persistent suitor (Ren Osugi), the rough fight between him and Keita, a
celebratory play and hopeful signs of fresh beginnings. While that last
ingredient, encapsulated in the idyllic final scene, is somewhat at odds with
the actual climate of post-WWII Japan, it still seems fitting for both the
characters and Shindo himself, who, after all, by now knows a thing or two
about marching onwards and finding fulfillment through productivity.

Casting Blossoms to the Sky

While
not quite yet at Shindo’s centennial level, Nobuhiko Obayashi, now 74, still
remains impressively productive for his advanced age and, more importantly, is
capable of proving he is still as full of surprises as he was when he made his
now-beloved 1977 cult classic, “House.” His latest effort, “Casting Blossoms to
the Sky,” is surely unlike anything else that will be screened this year. Over
the course of its breathless 160 minutes, it uses a reporter’s desire to visit
and investigate Nagaoka as a framework for its nearly essay-like exploration of
the city’s links to the events of WWII and personal accounts of those who
survived the destructive events of the past (with some of the real-life
inspirations behind certain characters actually making onscreen appearances).
Jumping from speaker to speaker at hot potato speeds and virtually pelting the
viewers with facts and stories, Obayashi weaves together the hidden details of
the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing operations, incendiary bombing incidents,
Pearl Harbor, 3-11, the art of firework creation, a young student’s ambitious
theatrical production and more into an exhilarating and touching cinematic
symphony. Its ardent plea for humanity to work towards a more hopeful future by learning from
history might have come across as being exhaustively preachy had it not been
presented in such a wholly sincere and original fashion, all the while
accompanied by a rich Joe Hisaishi score. And the daring, dreamlike quality of
the imagery only sweetens the deal, often reaching pulse-quickening heights –
who could ever forget the sight of a group of uniformed students perched
upright on their unicycles coasting across the frame in single-file along a
country road? Like many other shots, so odd, but so beautiful.

Kotoko

Shinya
Tsukamoto was present at the festival with his first film after a string of
more mainstream studio projects: “Kotoko,” which was given the Orizzonti Award
at the Venice International Film Festival last year. This up-close character
study of singer Cocco’s titular single mother as she struggles with mental
illness is an unquestionably powerful piece of cinema. Entering it, viewers
have little choice but to be confronted with her claustrophobic head space,
which plagues her with hallucinations of menacing doppelgangers, bursts of
brutal violence and a devouring sense of dread. Brilliantly orchestrating
camerawork, sound design and surrealist storytelling strategies, Tsukamoto has
produced an utterly terrifying viewing experience that may very well come to be
regarded as one of his finest accomplishments.

Sukiyaki

Fortunately,
there were other films that proved to be more gentle with audiences’ nerves,
two of them being Tetsu Maeda’s “Sukiyaki” and Shûichi Okita’s “The
Woodsman and the Rain,” which ended up winning the audience-voted Nippon
Cinema Award. The latter follows Kôji Yakusho’s lumberjack as he gets pulled
into a zombie film shoot led by an insecure 25 year-old writer-director (Shun
Oguri) while the former, with its “One Thousand and One Nights”-style narrative
concerning prison cellmates who share personal stories about their most
cherished meals in a contest for extra morsels, proves itself to be a worthy
thematic counterpart to such films as “Tampopo” and “Still Walking” with its
own extended, sumptuously photographed send-ups to the special links food
shares with memory and love. Certainly, like those films, “Sukiyaki” is bound
to leave viewers with a deeper appreciation for at least the next few dishes
they enjoy after the credits roll.

Ten Days Before Spring

Over
a year has passed since the earthquake, tsunami and ignition of Fukushima's nuclear troubles that occurred on March 11th, 2011, and in that time film festivals
have received numerous cinematic responses to the monumental events that
left a still-reverberating impact on Japan. Nippon Connection presented a
varied selection of mostly non-fiction films addressing the disasters, some of
which earning official recognition: Masaki Kobayashi’s “Fukushima Hula Girls”
came in third place in the audience vote for the Nippon Cinema Award (Tatsushi
Omori’s “Tada’s Do-It-All House” earned the second place spot). Additionally,
the jury for the Nippon Visions Award (consisting of journalist Andreas
Platthaus, filmmaker Yonghi Yang and the Pow-Wow’s own Chris MaGee) gave a
Special Mention to Yojyu Matsubayashi’s documentary “Fukushima: Memories of a
Lost Landscape” while bestowing the main award to Juichiro Yamasaki’s feature
debut, “The
Sound of Light.” My personal reflection on 3-11 during the festival
occurred via a short and feature pairing that began with “Ten Days Before
Spring,” written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Stefanie Kolk. Following a
Japanese woman living and working in Amsterdam (Misaki Yamada) who desperately
tries to make contact with her mother shortly after the tsunami hits, the fictional film
perfectly captures the utter helplessness and agonizing worry that so many like
the heroine must have experienced while waiting to hear from their loved ones
in Japan. She has no choice but to go through the motions of her daily routine
while ominous signs like the unanswered phone calls and a package from Japan
sent prior to the disaster emphasize the inescapable, terrible sense of
ambiguity. Not wasting any of its 13 minutes, the film wisely utilizes a lean,
observational style to depict with commendable clarity the main character’s
emotional state. Jumping from that distant vantage point straight into directly
affected zones on the Japanese coast shortly after the tsunami, Koichi Omiya’s
“The Sketch of Mujo” maintains a very specific approach to make its own
impression on viewers. No music, no voiceovers, no direct allusions to the
filmmakers’ presence behind the camera – just occasional interviews with
survivors and shot after lingering shot of the immeasurable quantities of
debris, ruins and scattered belongings left in the wake of the waves.

The Egoists

Arriving
late in the festival lineup, Ryuichi Hiroki’s “The Egoists” supplied an
electrifying jolt of sexiness and tragic recklessness to its lucky audience.
Small-time thug Kazu (Kengo Kora) and topless dancer Machiko (Anne Suzuki)
decide to ditch Tokyo and start a new life together, but disagreements with his
father, difficult patches in the relationship and, most seriously, a towering
debt to some particularly nasty yakuza soon begin to press heavily upon their
initial dreams of bliss and escape. Strongly evoking Jean-Luc Godard’s classic
tales of doomed love – think “Breathless” or “Pierrot le fou” – “The Egoists”
captivates with its ode to the glorious highs and cruel lows of passionate,
destructive youth. Another film that very nearly managed to be just as
compelling was Nobuhiro Yamashita’s “My Back Page,” which portrays a young
reporter’s immersion in the revolutionary activities of 1970s Japan and bond
with an alleged member of a radical group. The storytelling and character
development is multi-layered and engaging, though some may leave the film
craving a deeper immersion in the nitty-gritty of investigative research (as in
David Fincher’s “Zodiac”) or the narrative trajectories and details of history
(as in Olivier Assayas’ “Carlos”). Fortunately, festival-goers had
opportunities to further educate themselves in this tumultuous era of Japan’s
political history through the efforts of Vertigo Magazine
commissioning editor and film curator Julian Ross, who delivered a talk
entitled “Images of Protest, Images as Protest: Japanese Cinema and Political
Activism,” which covered the early May Day protests of the 1920s and ‘30s; such
filmmakers as Shinsuke Ogawa, Motoharu Jonouchi and Masao Adachi; and the more
recent protest activities in the wake of 3-11, among many other subjects. The
festival also featured a series of Japanese protest film screenings including
works by Ogawa and Jonouchi at Frankfurt’s Deutsches Filmmuseum.

The Great Rabbit

Another
guest present throughout the festival was Dr. Catherine Munroe Hotes of the Nishikata Film Review blog, who
was involved in multiple events representing another facet of Japanese cinema:
animation. A specialist in the field, Dr. Hotes assembled the animated shorts
program entitled “Spaces In-Between: Indie Animated Shorts from Japan,” which
included works by Tomoyasu Murata (“Lemon’s Road”), Akino Kondo (“Kiya Kiya”),
Koji Yamamura (“Muybridge’s Strings”), Ryo Hirano (“Holiday”), Mirai Mizue
(“Modern,” “Modern No. 2”) and Atsushi Wada (“In a Pig’s Eye,” “The Great Rabbit”).
Dr. Hotes also delivered a talk on puppet master Kihachiro Kawamoto, whom she
has written about for the “Directory of
World Cinema: Japan 2,” and conducted an onstage interview with Wada about
his work.

Our Homeland

Easily
the most moving film I encountered this year at Nippon Connection was,
fittingly, the very last one I saw, sneakily lying in wait in the lineup to
trump the previous offerings (despite their respective strengths) with its
calm, controlled power. Two years previous, I was greatly impressed by
Korean-Japanese filmmaker Yonghi Yang’s documentary “Sona,
the Other Myself” when it was screened at the festival; now, making her
transition into feature filmmaking with “Our Homeland,” she continues to
explore the troubling effects of North Korea’s controlling regime and, more
specifically, how it has divided her family by preventing her from maintaining
regular contact with her three brothers since they moved back to the isolated
nation in the 1970s. Based on Yang’s personal experiences, her new film stars
Arata Iura (better known simply as Arata) as Songho, a Japanese man who has
lived in North Korea for 25 years away from the rest of his family. Permitted a
three-month visit to Japan to treat a brain tumor (an opportunity that took
five years to secure), he is reunited with his family and friends, among them
his gruff father (Masane Tsukayama), who still remains firmly devoted to North
Korea’s ideology, and his caring sister Rie (Sakura Ando), who is unafraid to
voice her disgust at the absurd conditions that define Songho’s situation. A
painful sense of restriction and temporality permeates every second of Songho’s
visit, underlined by the physical presence of his stoic North Korean escort Mr.
Yang (Yang Ik-Joon, the writer and director of 2008’s “Breathless”). Iura’s
performance does so much to reflect the traumas suffered by his character – his
cautious reservation, nervous smiles and extreme shyness are all the signs of a
man who has spent most of his life afraid of testing the dangerous authority he
lives under, and who can still feel its hold on him during this all-too-brief
reprieve. Besides being a perfectly rendered consideration of a political
subject through an intensely personal story, “Our Homeland” reveals with
incredible insight just how much many might take for granted because they are
closer to Rie’s situation than Songho’s, and thus able to enjoy the closeness
of family, freedom of expression and privileges of a liberal society without
fear of dire and immediate repercussions. We need a film like this every now
and then (and maybe a little more often than that) to be reminded of both our
own good fortunes and the grotesque injustices that still persist in certain
parts of the world. After the diverse array of delights, shocks and food for
thought that my selection of films left me with throughout the week, it seemed
proper to finally conclude the festival (and, ironically, begin my journey home
to my own family) on a note of grateful contemplation.

* * *

Throughout the festival, attendees could watch artist Kozue Kodama as she "live-painted" a new picture from scratch

Nippon Visions Award: The Sound of Light (Juichiro Yamasaki)
Special Mention: Fukushima: Memories of a Lost Landscape (Yojyu Matsubayashi)

VGF Nippon in Motion Award: Koi-Man (Micaela Fonseca)

2nd Place: Bōru (Florian Gautier, Stephan Altenhein)

3rd Place: Chado: The Way of Tea (Andrej Uduc)

* * *

Both Chris and I would once again like to thank all the hard-working organizers, volunteers, technicians and press relations personnel who so warmly welcomed us and the other attendees and made this film festival such a positive and memorable experience.

The setup for Kôta Yoshida’s latest
film sounds like it wouldn’t at all be out of place in one of Judd Apatow’s
projects: a young slacker named Haruo (Tateto Serizawa) who is stuck in his job
as a video store supervisor faces an embarrassing problem that impedes his
ability to form proper romantic relationships: premature ejaculation. After
Momose, an alluring new employee, arrives at his store, he decides to actively
attempt to cure himself. However, this task is not that easy to pull off in his
apartment, where his roommate Noriko (Nagisa Umeno), limited living space and
thin walls eliminate any privacy he hopes to achieve. When the website he
consults instructs him to find a partner to help him, Haruo comes up with a
bold proposition: in return for chipping in more money for rent and keeping the
place clean, he wants Noriko to assist him in his goal to endure sexual
activity for fifteen minutes. After much pleading and sucking up, she agrees to
do him this very personal favor.

“Come
As You Are” certainly contains the sex comedy ingredients one would expect from
that description (not to mention the cheeky English title). Multiple scenes
show, through careful camera positions and blocking, Haruo desperately testing
his endurance with several masturbation sessions and engaging in intimate
encounters that end in awkwardness and failure. At one point, the poor guy
can’t even keep himself from cursing and yelling at his own malfunctioning
member. But rather than simply fishing for laughs to be had at his characters’
expense, Yoshida ensures that the latter – particularly Haruo and Noriko – are
properly developed and given personalities that extend far beyond the comic
situations. In doing so, both Yoshida and his talented actors are to be
commended. Serizawa’s portrayal of Haruo is especially impressive for how he
constantly uses body language and facial expressions to reflect his character’s
bound-up insecurities and tormented yearning. The sad attempts at feigning
indifference, the all-too-brief flashes of confidence, the brutally frank
confessions and humiliations – they all give real weight to Haruo’s plight and
make him intensely sympathetic. Opposite him, Umeno’s Noriko acts as the more
practical and mature one who keeps herself focused on her own priorities, which
include a crucial school exam. Her thrice-daily “help” sessions with Haruo are
dutifully carried out with an old sock of his (eventually replaced by gloves)
and are aurally portrayed by way of some wonderfully detailed sound effects.

Perhaps
predictably, the unique arrangement between Haruo and Noriko eventually reveals
the genuine feelings they have for one another. But don’t be fooled – this is
not a simple, meet-cute romantic comedy. Instead, the film remains focused on
the problems that plague and, in fact, define Haruo’s personal life. Having
worked at the video store and lived in the same apartment for eight years, he
prefers to tell people he is pursuing acting jobs on the side when in fact he
has clearly abandoned that dream. Directionless and lazy, the only real control
he seems able to exercise is over the shift schedule at work, which he mostly
uses so he can attempt to woo Momose. Yet through Noriko and others, he
steadily realizes just how sad and self-destructive his current lifestyle has
become. After a certain point, one wonders if his performance problem is in
fact the latest warning sign that he needs to make some serious changes for his
own good.

Kôta
Yoshida is probably best known for his 2010 film “Yuriko’s Aroma,” another
refreshingly honest and insightful work about people’s sex lives and the
complications within them that can spawn alienation. This is an area he has
proven himself to be quite talented in, as he clearly understands that, unlike
so many other films that take such matters for granted, human sexuality is a
strange and complex thing that everyone experiences differently. Yoshida has
openly demonstrated his sympathies for the less confident underdogs of the
world, in the process exploring the more sensitive issues that can lie in
waiting when affections and simple human urges are involved. His characters not
only search for personal acceptance and fulfillment, but also a way they can
achieve that ever-elusive thing called happiness without getting trampled upon
by the so-called social norms they are so often challenged by. Indeed,
Yoshida’s films seem to leave us with an important question: is there such a
thing as being “normal?” If Yoshida suggests that the answer is no, then he
also makes it clear that that is not such a bad thing.

“The Sound of Light” is a film
entirely set in one of the tougher corners of the world; a place where hard
work is a minimum requirement for making a living – and not even that can
guarantee prosperity or even survival. Yoshitomo Fujihisa plays the main
character Yusuke, a young man who, three years prior to the events of the film,
moved back to his family’s farm in the mountain town of Maniwa in Okayama
Prefecture from Tokyo after his father (Toyoyuki Sato) badly injured his foot.
This move put Yusuke’s ambitions of pursuing a musical career on indefinite
hold – a necessary sacrifice so he could lend a much-needed hand in the many
physically demanding tasks dutifully upheld by his father and grandmother
(Junko Sato) over the years. A small dairy farm fighting off debt, the business
requires the constant feeding and milking of its cows, among other chores.
Here, routine and dedication are the defining factors of daily life, bringing a
regular flow of early mornings and toil.

The
events of “The Sound of Light” are overshadowed by a past event described in an
opening title card: three years ago, a dairy farmer named Natsuo Asano was
killed in a car accident that spared his wife Yoko (Eri Mori) and son Ryota.
These characters are tied to Yusuke’s family in various ways: Natsuo was best
friends with Yoshiyuki (Takeshi Masago), Yusuke’s uncle, and the two men worked
hard together to establish their own dairy farm. But in the wake of Natsuo’s
death, Yoshiyuki’s life and business collapsed into ruin to the point that he
now bears the reputation of a madman. Also, Yusuke is in love with Yoko and
hopes to marry her – a plan complicated by Ryota being the only remaining male
in the Asano family. If Yusuke and Yoko were to get married, the boy would have
to go live with his grandmother on Natsuo’s side so as to continue the Asano
family name, thus presenting Yoko with a difficult decision – and indicating
another way how family responsibilities shape the characters’ lives.

One
of the clear strengths of “The Sound of Light” is the total immersion into
small-town farming life it gives. The impressive Chugoku mountains surround the
town’s scattered farms, businesses and homes, emphasizing the rural isolation
in which the characters eke out a living. Work maintains a strong grip on daily
life: whether tending to vegetable patches, preparing meals or, most often,
tending to the cows, Yusuke and his family – including his sister Haruko
(Yoshiko Nakamoto) and her boyfriend Takashi (Soichiro Tsuji) who visit and
lend a hand in the various chores – constantly see to the tall order of
responsibilities that need to be met. Writer and director Juichiro Yamasaki,
himself a Maniwa farmer, admirably approaches such actions with a still,
observant eye that ably captures the quiet dedication of the farmers. The
viewer is made quite aware of the tolls such a lifestyle demands – especially
through Yoshiyuki, who is publicly regarded as a failure and a cautionary tale.
Having driven away his wife, he burns down his barn, gives in to drinking and
attempts suicide. His misfortunes show that it takes more than hard work to
survive in farming; that loyal friends and family serve as irreplaceable
supports for perseverance. But even then, the farmers are at the mercy of
forces beyond their control. In one integral dialogue scene, Yoshiyuki explains
to Yusuke how he and Natsuo had to contend with a sudden rise in feed costs
and, more importantly, people’s indifference to local businesses in favor of
convenience. “The harder you work, the less you get,” he says, underlining the
dire consequences of the growth of world markets at the cost of the farmers’
hard-won labors. This bitter truth is not dwelled upon for too long, but its
weight is certainly not lost on the viewer.

Impressively,
Yamasaki maintains an even balance between depicting the real-life textures and
issues of the farming community and the more narrative-dependent strand of the
film dedicated to Yusuke’s personal situation. Visiting a graveyard of
amplifiers in the woods and uncovering a hidden guitar and the organ his mother
gave to him before leaving the family (alluding to a rift between her and
Yusuke’s more farming-oriented father), he still clearly holds onto his love
for making music. His father even offers to give him a saved bundle of one
million yen to help re-ignite the distant dream of returning to Tokyo. Yet Yusuke
remains bound to the important sense of duty that has kept him at the farm. As
a son and the heir to the farm, the weight of expectation lies heavily upon his
shoulders, even if his family grants him the permission necessary to break
away.

“The
Sound of Light” gives an even and honest portrayal of farming life, neither
exaggerating the great endurance it requires nor holding it up as a utopian
alternative to the light and bustle of Tokyo, which has never felt so distant
in a Japanese film as it does here. But occasionally, Yamasaki allows for
moments of hope and beauty: the night scene in which an actual calf is born,
Yusuke’s song to his mother quietly performed in a cold barn, the annual climb
up a nearby mountain on the morning of New Year’s Day to see the first sunlight
of the year. Such scenes make Yusuke’s journey seem worth the challenges it has
brought him, confirming that the sacrifices he made were willingly and, at
times, perhaps even gladly chosen.

We first see the woodsman hard at
work felling a tree. In fact, we hear him first, his chainsaw buzzing away in
an otherwise peaceful, sun-lit forest. However, he is eventually interrupted by
a bespectacled man who emerges from the wilderness and, after nearly getting
crushed by a falling tree, timidly asks him to stop working. He explains that a
film crew is shooting nearby, and they need quiet for the scene. The woodsman
gruffly complies. Little does he know that this will in fact be the first
occasion of many in which the film crew will ask for his assistance, the next
one involving tracking down the perfect river for a scene.

Played
by Kôji Yakusho, the woodsman, Katsu, lives a quiet and simple life in the
mountain town of Yamamura. The two-year anniversary of his wife’s death is
nearing, and he lives alone with his teenage son (Kengo Kora), whose laziness
and difficulties in finding a new job have caused some tension to arise between
them. Katsu’s steady routine of neatly preparing meals for himself, interacting
with his three work buddies and cutting down and moving timber is gradually
overturned by the arrival of the film crew. The location scout for the river,
wherein Katsu’s sincere attempts to find the crew a “pretty” spot are initially
rejected for being too impractical for the shoot’s requirements, eventually
leads to another, totally unexpected request: for Katsu to don a wig and
ghoulish makeup and play a menacing zombie for the movie! Afterwards, he is
invited to see the dailies with the rest of the crew, which really sparks his
curiosity and begins to turn his impatience with the demanding moviemakers into
genuine excitement.

As
he first begins to help the film crew, Katsu notices – and actually berates – a
young man with an untidy mop of hair and a sweatshirt who seems all but
paralyzed by shyness, hindering any possibility of being useful to the rest of
the team. He turns out to be Koichi Tanabe (Shun Oguri), the terribly
inexperienced writer and director of the zombie film, which is entitled
“Utopia.” He unsuccessfully attempts to flee from his duties at a train station
and is forced to return to the set the next day, where he is daunted by the
many questions and demands thrown at him by his actors and technicians. Yet
Katsu compulsively returns to the film set and proves to be a source of comfort
and reassurance for the flustered director. One of the nicest scenes between
the two very different men is a lunchtime conversation in which Katsu points
out two pine trees – one twenty-five years old, one sixty, matching Koichi and Katsu’s
respective ages – and says that it takes one hundred years for a pine to fully
mature, suggesting that they naturally both still have some growing up to do.

“The
Woodsman and the Rain” mainly chronicles Koichi’s steady acceptance of his role
as director while Katsu all but pounces on new ways of helping out the
production. He soon starts getting the whole town involved, recruiting its
inhabitants to play pale-skinned zombies and members of an all-female, bamboo
spear-wielding army. The infectious joy and enthusiasm the townsfolk give off
as they devote themselves to the shoot highlight filmmaking as a truly
collaborative event. As in François Truffaut’s classic tribute to the craft,
“Day for Night,” filmmaking helps bring people together in a spirit of fun and
productivity. Notably, there are two occasions when Katsu demonstrates his
talent for predicting the weather: first near the beginning, when a rainstorm
halts the logging crew’s efforts, then later on when another torrential
downpour halt the filming of a crucial sequence. Such scenes, indicating the
woodsman’s instinctive bond with the rain (hence the film’s title), are perhaps
meant to show how the duties of a lumberjack aren’t that different from those
of a filmmaker: both involve hard work and dedication, and are ultimately at
the mercy of such larger forces as nature and circumstance.

Through
the warm bond that forms between Katsu and Koichi, “The Woodsman and the Rain”
illustrates the universal process of discovering and seizing our true callings
in life. This can involve summoning hidden reserves of courage and confidence,
as Koichi hesitatingly experiences, or learning how to manage pre-existing
commitments to family, as both Katsu and his son discover. But such worries can
become so small and insignificant compared to the spiritual nourishment offered
by clear sensations of purpose and passion – whether they come from cutting
down trees or making the next great Japanese zombie movie.

“Die! Directors, Die!” feels very
much like a giant joke being played on its audience. But the question is
whether it is a sneakily elaborate one that actually has some meaning behind
its attempts at comedy or a winding, clumsily told one that botches its own
punch line. The surface elements of the film will likely turn off some viewers
right away: shakey, unpolished MiniDV camerawork; jarring, shrill jump scares
and bursts of violence and a cheap, in-your-face approach to gore that seems
directly inspired by the notorious “Guinea Pig” film series. In many respects,
it cleanly fits in with the multitudes of v-cinema schlock that have come
before it. But where it throws a curve ball of-sorts is in its numerous
comments on filmmaking and the true roles of both directors and movies, which
are first introduced through its amusingly provocative title.

“Die!
Directors, Die!” opens with a student’s graduating film being shown in a
screening room at the newly relocated Film School of Tokyo. The project is
essentially a loud and clunky mash-up of horror movie imagery that the young
director intended to be “the ultimate horror film.” His teacher, Shimazaki,
harshly criticizes the film and labels it as a disgrace to filmmaking, but
shortly after he in turn is denounced by another student who hurls such
scathing remarks as, “Pure directorial visions suck!” This causes Shimazaki to
suffer a mental breakdown, and he bursts back into the screening room armed
with a spear attached to a camera that brings to mind a similar weapon from
Michael Powell’s famous “Peeping Tom.” With it, he claims forty-two victims in
an extended, over-the-top massacre sequence before attempting to kill himself,
then vanishing. Four years later, a group of film students led by Natsuki,
their controlling director, seek out the site of the incident to shoot their
own film. However, odd paranormal occurrences and strange behavior from some of
the crewmembers soon give way to a chaotic and unpredictable onslaught of
events.

Perhaps
to look too closely at – or react too negatively to – the rough, amateurish
quality of “Die! Directors, Die!” is to miss or ignore the opinions declared by
the young filmmaker at the beginning, who proudly claims he doesn’t care at all
about film theory and believes he makes films for audiences, not himself. Or
maybe it is the highly negative portrayal of directors, from the naïve student
to Shimazaki to the crazed Natsuki, that is most important here. Several other
characters also trash-talk cinematic authors, including a member of Natsuki’s
crew who exclaims, “Directors are all a bunch of lunatics.” It could be that
all of this is meant to address and attack the tendency of filmgoers –
particularly cinephiles – to focus on the director and his or her voice as the
main creative factors in a film. And in turn, perhaps cinema itself – or, at
least, the kinds of cinema that commonly attract attention and praise – is
being rejected outright, and “Die! Directors, Die!” is meant to be seen as a
piece of anti-cinema that gleefully embraces its unattractive techniques as an
extended middle finger to established habits and expectations.

But
for every intriguing, potentially thought-provoking ingredient, including the
anti-director remarks, a number of references to well-known films and
filmmakers and a trip to snowy Yubari – of course, home to the legendary Yubari
International Fantastic Film Festival – there are at least two that throw
wrenches into the works, blurring any meaningful attempts at coherent
commentary with goofiness, immaturity and befuddlement. The horror plotline,
complete with classic pale-skinned, long-haired, contorting ghosts and a
violence-inducing video recording, seems to suggest an attempt at a
full-fledged genre product rather than a clever deconstruction. The purposely
icky, gratuitous instances of violence come across as plain silly and designed
solely to court shocks and laughs – especially when it reaches such ludicrous
points as a newly-born, clearly fake baby being swung around a room by its
umbilical cord. The characters are never fully developed enough to warrant a
proper connection with the viewers, and their wandering trajectories are often
cumbersome and tiring to watch unfold. Altogether, despite all the suggestions
that there is something liberating and valuable to take away from the
shamelessly crude nature of “Die! Directors, Die!” I simply felt that it was
too muddled and unrefined to be taken seriously all the way. But then again,
maybe I’m just blind to the inherent suckiness of pure directorial visions.